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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

We don't want your electric car ... we want your car, but electric.

We want an electric F150 or an electric Suburban or v90 wagon or whatever.

But instead we get e-initiative i-mobiles. We get TRON-cars. We get iModels.

There is a reason for this:

The incumbent auto makers understand fully that the ICE version of whatever model they electrify will suffer enormously.

They believe that they can somehow retain all of the sales of the existing ICE model while adding growth sales of a different electric model.

And, of course, they are wrong: because nobody wants an "electric F150". They just want an F150. But electric.

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What particularly was overly "electric F-150" versus "F-150 but electric" on the Lightning? When i tested it, and when other reviewers talked about it they generally praised how normal truck like it was compared to even the Rivian R1T.

I preordered a lightning and they never offered to sell me one for under $80k…

Chevrolet makes these. The Blazer and the Blazer EV look roughly the same. The Equinox and Equinox EV look more different but not completely different. The Silverado and the Silverado EV look completely different, but given those other models, I don't think it's for lack of trying.

Similarly, Volvo's EX cars look almost exactly like their XC counterparts.

"Similarly, Volvo's EX cars look almost exactly like their XC counterparts."

Interesting you should mention ...

Here is the interior of the 2025 XC90:

https://0x.co/AJ5PVP

... and here is the 2025 EX90:

https://0x.co/Z3ZQPF

That's not a mistake and they know exactly what they are doing: they think they can sell the EX90 in addition to the XC90 and the dramatically different UI/UX/styling is an effort to keep the XC money flowing.

If the electric one was just the XC90 ... but electric ... they know they'd barely sell another ICE one again.

These two interiors look dang near the same. One has a faux stick shifter versus a dial. Big deal. You could randomize which was the EV and which was the ICE and I'd have no clue.

They are completely different platforms.

The EX90 platform is from the a ground up a purely electric vehicle while the 2025 XC90 runs on the same platform with upgrades and face-lifts since 2015.

The EX90 is a couple of years late to the market due to software integration problems.

Previously they’ve been sharing platforms across ICE and BEV like the XC40 and XC40 Recharge now rebranded EX40. But now Volvo is going electric.

> The incumbent auto makers understand fully that the ICE version of whatever model they electrify will suffer enormously.

So you're saying they make _less_ profit on the EVs? That seems dubious.

> They believe that they can somehow retain all of the sales of the existing ICE model while adding growth sales of a different electric model.

Well.. precisely. Isn't the solution to make the EVs more profitable than the ICEs? Meanwhile Toyota's out here killing it in Hybrids.

Well, instead of cannibalizing ICE sales, why not have your cake and eat it to?

- Ford & Marie Antoinette

> "It is difficult to get a corporation to understand something, when its stock price depends upon its not understanding it!"

Paraphrased from Upton Sinclair

When your entire supply chain is optimized in ICE vehicles, it’s a tough sell to re-org everything for EVs. And when you try to half-ass it, it doesn’t pan out well, and you end up in this situation.

Isn’t it well known that they’ve lost money for every Lightning they’ve sold? Whereas the ICE F-150 is one of their most profitable sales?

Dealers certainly make less profit on EVs. The Dealer model was built around regular, required maintenance schedules as profit centers. EVs have far fewer moving parts and fluids with regular maintenance schedules.

Dealers are incentivized to sell more ICE than EVs for the good of their own profits. Ford and GM unfortunately can't cannibalize their relationship with dealers under current American regulations and so will feel a lot of pressure to somehow keep EVs "luxury" and low volume/high margin deals for the dealers so they feel less bad about the loss of maintenance profits.

At one point Ford was teasing building their EV division as a mini-startup with direct-to-consumer sales and no pressure to meet dealer needs/demands, because that would be the only true way to compete with Tesla and Rivian and others. That probably would have been the best interest for Ford EVs, but obviously just floating those rumors was enough to stop it by the number of dealers that are also shareholders in Ford. (A problem for Ford all the way back to Ford v. Dodge Brothers.)

>Dealers certainly make less profit on EVs. The Dealer model was built around regular, required maintenance schedules as profit centers. EVs have far fewer moving parts and fluids with regular maintenance schedules.

Is there any data out there on what percentage of new car buyers take their vehicle to the dealer for maintenance? I've found myself in a position where I can't do my own maintenance for the first time in many years, and after waiting 3 hours for an oil change 3 different time at 3 different dealers I doubt I'll ever hand my keys to a dealer service department ever again for any non-warranty work. And this is on top of their extortionate pricing.

For one piece of anecdata:

I drive a hybrid with a weird size/shape 12V battery. (It uses the traction battery for starting, so only needs a smaller 12V for e.g. accessories and simple bootstrapping of electronics.) Though I normally do my own maintenance at this scale, when it went bad I went to the dealer because they both had the right battery and didn't charge much more than parts. Plus drove me home after dropoff, and drove me back there when it was done (a few hours later? fuzzy memory), at no extra cost.

They're not all awful?

I don't have actual statistics, but some factors I can think of:

- New car leases sometimes require dealership-only maintenance.

- Car warranties sometimes imply upcharges may be allowed (such as labor fees) during warranty services if non-warranty maintenance wasn't handled by the dealership.

- New cars sometimes come with discount plans or service subscriptions for maintenance at the dealership.

- Maintenance at a single dealership still sometimes gets reflected in resale value, including trade-ins to that dealership and also some people and auctions will pay a small premium for "single owner, dealer maintained" cars.

Yeah, dealers are an interesting experience at times, but there's an interesting web of reasons that people still use those services.

I really miss all the short trucks.

For a long time I had a F150 supercab (made in the 90's) and while it was a great truck it was just excessive for 99% of what I used the vehicle for. That includes the vast majority of times I used it to haul and tow! I always envied my friend's smaller truck. Over a decade I think my truck was the better vehicle in only a handful of situations. (Far better to rent one for the day at that point)

I absolutely hate all the new trucks. That supercab was too large and trucks today feel bigger. Especially the front huge grill (which is also incredibly dangerous). That truck I had was already hard to drive. I loved having a truck but parking is an absolute nightmare, especially in cities where lanes and spaces are not only shorter but narrower. All these big trucks are even harder to drive but people love them because they feel safer (in a perverted and most American arms race imaginable)

But I do like things like power outlets in the bed. I don't give a shit about the infotainment system, but the sockets in the bed is actually helpful. I'd have used that a much larger portion of the time than I used the actual size of my truck. Just being able to plug in a drill (or charge one) is really helpful to more /general/ "truck activities". Not to mention all the things like camping or other things where you take a vehicle like that. But even in those situations you don't need a huge vehicle 99% of the time.

Side note:

I now drive a small compact sedan and am absolutely pissed by how many people drive with their high beams on and are putting in projector bulbs and not properly aiming them. I'm very close to installing a mirror to reflect peoples highbeams back into their own car. Blinding me may increase your visibility, but it also decreases both of our safety. Your brighter lights make you feel safer, but they make you less.

Retro reflective material will do the trick. Try a retroreflective hi-viz vest on the headrest.

DOT and SOLAS conspicuity tape (the red and white reflective stuff on semi trailers and so on) is mandatory for certain commercial vehicles, but also works great on bikes, scooters, strollers, backpacks (or rigid tags attached to backpacks, many varieties are kind of stiff), boots, helmets, and other things that you want not to be run over by vehicles with headlights.

It comes in a few grades, the better ranks are magnificently, astonishingly bright! You can also get more flexible, stretchy types made to be stitched or glued onto fabric.

I outfitted my classy black bike and bike gear with a bunch of material from reflectivepro.com, they're easy to deal with even for consumers who only need a little bit of material.

>I really miss all the short trucks

I hope the Telo pans out (and comes down in price to where I can afford one). Looks funny but it's such an obvious idea.

https://www.telotrucks.com/

It's funny because when I saw the Slate, I thought it was cool, but the bed was a bit too short to camp in. And there was a large front trunk, a little too large I thought. If only they could take a bit off the front, and put it in the back.

And then I saw the Telo! Hah, they went too far in the opposite direction. Something between these two is what I'd like.

Haven't heard of the Slate before. Not sure about only having two doors but the price is a lot more attractive.

Funny, I've never head of Telo before, but I'd trade the rear cab for more bed length. 6' is a good length where you can fit a lot more things.

The Telo has a fold down rear wall to extend the bed. The Slate looks like the wall can be removed in SUV mode, less convenient to do so however.

Oh that's actually nice. Though in Slate's defense, they are trying to be the cheapest car possible so I'm not sure they're direct comparisons.

Yes, that’s how I think ev truck should look like. With a bit longer bed probably in

I don't actually think people are driving around with high beams on. Modern LED headlights are just brighter, and cars are higher up than they used to be, meaning older lower cars, especially sedans are just in the path of regular beams. I actually yelled at someone once to turn off their high beams because I was so convinced that's what it was. turns out, they just drive a tesla, which just have blinding lights. I guess there are also probably people with high beams, but most of the ones that are terrible aren't high beams, they are just modern.

While I think that's part of it I can assure you there's also a lot of people running around with their brights on. I've seen them switch (after aggressively flashing mine) and the brights are a wider beam. So it is not just the intensity.

My running hypothesis is the autobright features on some cars is to blame. My friend drives around with his on and I definitely notice it doesn't properly react.

  > they just drive a tesla, which just have blinding lights

I was thinking of that Deer in the Headlights ad from years ago and then stumbled on Mercedes promoting this... 11 years ago...[0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3pTHSIYFlg

I live in a pretty urban area, so maybe that's why I haven't seen so many brights. I've heard the autobright theory and it certainly makes sense though, especially in areas where people have a reason to use their brights.

> [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3pTHSIYFlg

I believe this technology is generally called adaptive headlights, and is implemented in quite a few cars. I believe some quirk of US laws (which specifies brightness at various points in the beam) actually prevents this feature from being implemented. Really sucks, because these new LED headlights are really hard to stand at night.

I live in an urban area, but not what I'd call a big city. There are plenty of dark areas so people do put on their brights even though it actually isn't necessary. I see people turn them on anytime there's 100ft without a streetlight. Though I've still seen some of this in major cities like LA, though I feel like the highbeam rate is lower.

Then again, I also see people turn them on in the fog and rain...

But I'm convinced it isn't a singular problem. I'm certain the LEDs are part of the issue, but not the whole story. I mean for example, improperly aligned headlights isn't as big of a problem when the lights aren't as bright. But when they are brighter then this matters a lot more. Hell, I've seen brand new vehicles be misaligned.

I'd love an off-road capable electric 4WD (because think about how amazing having computer controlled precision torque applied to wheels individually would be for getting out of a tricky situation).

Especially if you could buy some kind of field charging kit - maybe something you could power off a wood fire or flexible solar panels that you could stow. I imagine that's not realistic at the moment, but a boy can dream.

Look at the new Scout, they are planning to do everything you mentioned

> having computer controlled precision torque applied to wheels individually

Fwiw many vehicles already have this. Mechanical torque vectoring via differentials, electronic controlled differentials, and electronic brake-based torque vectoring. The latter is the most common, works pretty well in modern cars

Isn’t that the rivian R1? Incredibly capable off-road. One of a small number of stock model cars to complete the Rubicon trail

The Rivian has pretty limited range. The Scout looks promising though.

People out in the ranch country, oil patch, some mining areas, etc often want a reliable 600-ish miles unloaded. That’s why extended fuel tanks are a common option. Even without an extended fuel tank, you can often achieve that with an ICE and a jerry can.

EVs have great potential as 4WD off-road vehicles. In a lot of ways they are more naturally suited to it. Their main weakness is range and loiter time. In many contexts it will be days before you’ll be able to get to a charging point.

The killer feature of ICE in this context is the tremendous range and simplicity of extending range if you need more. Fuel is very compact, easy to bring with you, and available from other vehicles if you run short. An EV that can augment its range indefinitely with fuel is probably the sweet spot.

I think we’ll get there relatively soon.

I guess you could strap a few kw generator in the bed with some jerry cans as backup. Would take longer, but if by loiter time you mean time out in the field where you’re not moving, then maybe that’d work. Would be cool if there was the equivalent of siphoning gas from one to another.

Is there electric infrastructure in the places you’re describing? If so, should be really easy to throw down some moderate-speed L2 chargers in various parts as a last resort. They’re incredibly cheap and don’t need much maintenance.

i was assuming the person i was responding to was talking about recreational offroading, not ranching, oiling or mining in the middle of nowhere.

A max pack rivian has a 400ml range, which is plenty for the vast majority of recreational adventures.

Holy hell, that's 640ish km, that's plenty - and yep, I'm not from a large continental country, 640 gets me to the other side of my island and 2.5 times, and to the northern or southern end once.

That’s fair. There are “recreational offroaders” in the sense of urban bros that do casual offroading on well-developed trails with associated infrastructure. That is the nerf version of offroading in the US. Some of those trails are cool on their own merits, I don’t want to take away from them.

The US has vast regions that casual tourists never venture into and have no infrastructure that are nonetheless economically important or excellent for exploring.

If you stay near the Interstates, you’ll be able to manage with electric vehicles. But the best parts of the Mountain West are pretty far from the Interstate Highways. The deep Utah, Nevada, or Arizona wilderness is phenomenal but you’d be an idiot to attempt that with an EV. Just getting caught in a mountain pass during a blizzard in May or September could be enough to cook you.

I’m not against EVs in any sense but the tech is still pretty risky for the realities of the Mountain West of the US. I have learned many lessons the hard way about how you can be stranded or die in the Mountain West that makes me cognizant of the limitations of EV currently.

I am bullish on EV, I’d love to have one if it met my technical specs, but they aren’t there yet.

I'm from NZ where 640km range is plenty, for even our gnarliest terrain, so I'm stoked. I have to say, this is a bit dismissive out of hand.

> urban bros that do casual offroading on well-developed trails with associated infrastructure.

Yeah, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Not everyone commenting here is from the US.

I'm talking about things like driving up braided riverbeds to places like this, Mathias Hut, just downstream of a glacier or two. [0]

Or like this, Avoca Hut, in an isolated valley two days walk in otherwise. [1]

Or some of the very rugged routes on the West Coast of the South Island / Te Waipounamu. [2]

Trips like this in the Southern Alps. [3]

Or Napoleon Hill. [4]

640km range would get me to that route, from the east side of my island via an alpine pass [5], through the route, and back home again, on one charge, which is awesome.

We don't have the same scale of distance as the USA, that's true, but we have the same scale of challenging terrain, so please don't be so quick to dismiss our use case as "urban bros doing casual offroading", just because the distances are lower, please.

As for well developed 4WD trails, lol.

I used to be a ranger in a national park here, and American tourists were routinely gobsmacked that our tramping (hiking) routes (trails) didn't have bridges, (and also, often didn't have an actual track or trail, you just picked your own way up the riverbed) and you'd have to walk through the rivers - and no, don't take your boots off, because you're going to cross that river another 5 - 10 times, you just have to accept you're going to have wet feet, welcome to NZ hiking.

So if we don't have that many well developed hiking trails, we certainly don't have well-developed off-roading trails.

[0]: https://dea83hfeh03sc.cloudfront.net/media/3171/conversions/...

[1]: https://www.doc.govt.nz/thumbs/hero/contentassets/10442f8efa...

[2]: https://nz4wd.co.nz/article/hard-drive-denniston

[3]: https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/nz/97642423/brea...

[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnZ6dMg4yvs

[5]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Arthur%2...

That looks amazing! I haven’t been to NZ yet. I was not trying to dismiss your offroad bonafides.

It is the distance scale in the US that makes the difference. In the mountain west, you can blow through a range budget of 640km really easily. There are weather and other events that add 100-200km of unplanned travel that you can’t know ahead of time. There is also no Internet connectivity in much of it! The sparsity of charging stations in more remote regions just makes it worse. If you find you need to re-route, you may be a very long way from the closest accessible charging station and it may be in a direction you did not intend to go.

I wasn’t trying to be dismissive. The US has unique challenges for EV range due to its scale. There isn’t much margin for error on range, especially if the road closes due to avalanches, flooding, etc. You can find yourself hundreds of kilometers from the nearest thing resembling civilization at inopportune times.

I owned one of the first VW eGolfs, and it was an excellent car. Just a regular golf with an electric drive.

The new Polo EV looks perfect.

I wish they sold the Polo in the US.

160hp and 0-60 at 10seconds. Yikes. That does sound like a regular golf.

It’s quite sporty to drive but has about twice the torque you can easily put down with energy efficient ev tires in a small light FWD car so you need to go easy if you want tires to last. Handles great also. Those might be low specs nowadays but were respected performance car specs not long ago, and roads haven’t changed any- plus those were big specs at redline in a combustion engine, feels like a heck of a lot more with the instant torque at any speed of an EV. It’s still way more power than you need, and more than enough to have fun. And I say that as a Porsche enthusiast that drives a lot of fast and sporty cars.

What are you on about. 20 year basic crossover SUV has better 0-60.

I'm not talking about specs on paper, I'm talking about the actual experience of driving it in the real world. As the saying goes, “people buy horsepower but drive torque.” Horsepower on an electric motor vehicle is often effectively a software setting based on what RPM or top speed they allow, and the eGolf is set with a low rev limiter/top speed from the factory probably to limit battery temps.

For example, in the eGolf you have a flat torque curve with 100% of the power available instantly at any speed, without shifting.

A basic crossover SUV with a 4 cylinder engine and slippy/slow responding automatic can easily have more horsepower, and a faster 0-60, but still feel gutless in normal driving compared to the e-Golf because you have very little torque at normal RPMs, and you need to rev the engine to the redline to actually use the horsepower, which typically involves a lot of lag time, and then a lot of jerking and noise in your typical basic low end car.

You could for example compare it to a Nissan Rogue from the same era, which has 170 horsepower. The Rogue sometimes feels scary slow like it can’t get out of its own way and has to be floored and ran to the redline to get it really moving, whereas with the eGolf it takes some finess to launch it smooth without wheelspin due to the instant on torque. Most people would be shocked to hear that the Rogue technically has a more powerful motor.

Consider that the ALH TDI Golf and Jetta (diesel) had literally only 90 horsepower also with a totally flat torque curve, way less than the e-Golf, and are also feel a lot more sporty than your typical 4 cylinder gasoline economy car, despite being radically slower on paper, or floored in a straight line drag race.

Extend this to other cars- take an early Porsche Boxster with only 200 horsepower, one of the best drivers cars in history, but on paper slower than a lot of low end economy cars nowadays. But the amazing handling, and wide torque band let it hang with a lot of supercars in a real world track race. It would literally lose a drag race against a modern low end economy car, yet it feels way faster and is way faster on say, a track with turns.

The eGolf isn't a sports car, but it will never feel like it's lacking in power for normal driving.

e-Golf is one of the worst EVs and no matter your handwaving is going to help your case.

Yes it might have instant torque, but still way too little torque. Like comically little. And it weights almost as much as Model 3. It's a dog.

Too little torque for what? I grew up driving full sized trucks and vans that had only half the power of an eGolf in a much larger heavier vehicle yet can still keep up with modern freeway traffic.

Model 3 isn’t even in the same league for build quality, driving experience, or overall design and engineering. It has a more powerful drivetrain and larger battery because it came out years later, but the Golf is all around a great car in all of its forms, and the model 3 is just not. It’s not a crazy powerful car but its no dog- it has twice the power most people will ever want or need for regular driving.

For accelerating faster than 70s car...

I feel I'm arguing with a bot.

If you actually thought you were arguing with a bot you wouldn’t bother replying. Most of those “slow” 70s cars with nowhere near the power of an eGolf could still leisurely cruise all day at over 100mph even up a grade, hit freeway speeds in a tiny fraction of the onramp, and keep up with freeway traffic towing a heavy trailer, for some reasonable context on what is actually needed and usable for transportation on public roads.

I feel I’m arguing with someone that has never actually driven a car, nor is able to have a civil disagreement like an adult. Your tone is simply not how we do things on HN.

Maybe one of these days Edison out of Canada will get hybrid generator conversion kits out.

While this sounds clever, it just isn't true. The electric F150 looks and feels virtually identical to the non-electric one.

It's not some evil big business conspiracy. It's just that the F150 buyer tends to travel longer distances for work/play over traditional car buyers (more on the edge of suburban/rural, less urban), hence the range anxiety problem with all-electric. Couple that with higher upfront costs, lower resale values, and cheap fuel in the US, it's pretty obvious why the market would prefer a hybrid or ICE F150.

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